Traumatic Brain Injuries Can Cause Vision Problems

Traumatic brain injury can produce cognitive, sensory or physical impairments. This includes the fact that traumatic brain injury can cause vision problems. It is now understood by medical professionals that a high percentage of victims suffering from traumatic brain injury have related vision problems.

Following a brain injury, there can be damage to the nerves that operate the muscles controlling eye movements as well as the system that regulates focusing.

Some of these vision problems or symptoms are as follows:

Double vision (diplopia)

Problems with eye movement and eye tracking

Difficulty with shifting gaze from one point to another (saccadics)

Problems with focusing

Problems with eye alignment (Binocular Vision Dysfunction — BVD)

Light sensitivity

Problems with eye contact

Neuro-optometrists recognize that a brain injury can cause symptoms and vision problems that affect the functional vision system and have identified it as a syndrome — Post Traumatic Vision Syndrome (PTVS). These vision problems caused by the traumatic brain injury can cause related symptoms including:

Headaches

Dizziness

Nausea

Anxiety

Motion sickness

Poor depth perception

Lack of good balance

Clumsiness

Aching eyes

Neck pain

Head tilting

These related symptoms are caused by the brain attempting to correct the eye problem resulting in overworking the eye muscles which results in some of the above symptoms. In addition, if the problem is eye alignment (Binocular Vision Dysfunction), another compensation that the brain will make will be to cause head tilting in order to attempt to properly align the eyes.

Binocular Vision Dysfunction (BVD) is one of the problems that can occur caused by the traumatic brain injury. Binocular Vision Dysfunction is a visual problem where the line of sight from one eye tends to be slightly out of alignment with the line of sight from the other eye. This puts a heavy strain on the eye muscles, as they are constantly trying to correct the alignment to achieve single focus vision. This causes strain on the eye muscles that can cause headaches, dizziness, reading difficulties and head tilting.

Regarding eye problems caused by traumatic brain injury: It is important for anyone having suffered a traumatic brain injury and now experiencing visual problems to contact an eye doctor who treats, understands and specializes in treating the visual consequences of a traumatic brain injury.

These vision problems following traumatic brain injury can be treated with different types of therapy and corrective lenses, including prism lenses.

The attorneys at the Karns Law Group have combined decades of experience representing those suffering from traumatic brain injuries. They are members of the Brain Injury Association of America and the North American Brain Injury Society. To see how the law firm can help with your case, visit our Brain Injury page or contact our office to set up a free initial consultation.

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